Another Hotel Luggage Label – The Hongkong Hotel

The original Hongkong Hotel was on the site of the former Oriental Hotel on Pedder Street. Its soft opening in 1868 was presided over by C H M Bosman, and with the governor, His Excellency Sir Richard Macdonnell, as guest of honour. The hotel was dubbed by the media the “greatest enterprise of the kind in China and Japan”. Charles Duggan was recruited from The Langham in London to be the hotel’s first manager. For a time the nascent Hong Kong Stock Exchange was held on the hotel’s veranda before getting its own building. In 1904 the whole hotel was fitted out with electric lights. It was to remain part of the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotel group until the mid-1950s.